Omega?

I think what Arbe meant to say was that, to him, it doesn't look all that complete. And I have to agree.

Rule #1. Never let programmers design user interfaces.

In your recent fonts and maps editor shot, you've got an incredibly high amount of things bunched together with little distinction. It takes me several seconds to determine that the black bars with italic text ("Fonts" for example) are main headers, and the gray bars with italic text are subheaders. Gray bars with normal text are sub-subheaders. There's almost no spacing between controls.

You have a tab strip at the top, with a whopping two items and the other page is as bad as this one. With a window this wide, you could put every heading on its own tab.

And protip: use the regular grouping controls.

tl;dr version: your editor is a cluttered mess. It does what it does and it does it great, but it looks like CRAP!

Edit: This is what Lazy Shell reminds me of.

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<GreyMaria> I walked around the Lake so many goddamn times that my sex drive was brutally murdered
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So you made it?

Well, see to it you do. It's good to see you react this way.

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<GreyMaria> I walked around the Lake so many goddamn times that my sex drive was brutally murdered
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Against my better judgment, I'll take you on here.

Well, that's the whole argument of functionality vs simplicity isn't it? Its not like we have a design team that works solely on the interface. We do what we think works best, and hope it pans out.

I prefer giangurgolo's reply, actually. You don't have a design team, and neither do I. I'm still trying to trick one of the kids in #acmlm into a short usability test.

I personally love the interface, but your right, this is the main complaint I have heard about. Sure its complex and looks confusing at first, but controls grouped together well. It has undergone maybe 4 or 5 redesigns to simplify it, and that takes a lot of time. And so what if it takes you a few seconds to determine whats what. I doubt you could open any application and just start working. It is unrealistic to expect an editor that supports all this functionality, but has a simple design. Its just not possible with our limited resources.

Controls are grouped together indeed. My point here is that the groups themselves are clumped together too much. It's complex, and at first, indeed confusing. I have opened a lot of different applications and did indeed just "started working", and I don't expect an editor with all this functionality to be simple. It's just an enormous, cluttered mess. That's why MS came up with the Ribbon, by the way: the Office programs got too big for the old UI paradigms to handle. The design you have now may be simple, but it sure don't look that way.

The interface actually reminds me a lot of a piece of software called 3D Studio Max. It is very complex, but it allows users to create all the beautiful 3D effects you see in movies today. If Lazy Shell didn't have all this functionality, we wouldn't be able to create anything great with it.

I've used 3DS Max. It's very complex, but it's still much cleaner than Lazy Shell and I can use it well. And by the way, you'd be surprised how much productions used alternatives like Lightwave. The Matrix, Star Trek Voyager, probably Enterprise too...

The way I see it, if your serious about wanting to make a good hack, you should be willing to spend the couple hours on the learning curve. If your not, then you probably shouldn't be using this editor. I know what you mean, and we are trying to counter the learning curve by providing good documentation, but in the end I don't want to see a bunch of 1 level SMW hacks come out of this because that's a waste of everyone's time.

Lazy Shell is for the romhacker equivalent of power users? That still doesn't justify the design as it is now. I've seen plenty power user applications so far and they looked much better than this. No clutter at all, except for some warts with multi-line tabstrips.

We are not Apple here, and we are not catering to the average computer illiterate citizen. We have tried to simplify it, but at a point you compromise functionality for simplicity. We can really only simplify it by removing functionality. Nobody is saying its perfect, but we have chosen not to sacrifice one for the other, and if it means you spend an additional 2 hours learning the application, I ask you consider the hundreds of hours we spent programming and designing.

Yes, the interface can be simplified. I'd be happy to shop up some mockups.

Edit for spacing, and I'll repeat the important line once more: I'd be happy to shop up some mockups.

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<GreyMaria> I walked around the Lake so many goddamn times that my sex drive was brutally murdered
Kawa rocks — byuu

I went the easy route and started with the font editor. I already have the Monster Stats editor screenshot ready to rework, though.



KP suggested in IRC to have the button bar at the left stand out as one. A darker background, for example. Add to that the possibility of grouping some together and all it takes is just a little drilling down for the user to avoid a huge list of buttons, which would be counter-intuitive.

The color palette editor requires further explanation here. The up/down buttons would work as expected, but the dropdown would pop up a slider. Press and hold the dropdown, then just drag. It's like in later Paintshop Pro versions.

I could've gone with "regular" frames, but I decided to be nice.


...goddamn, Watercolor and Luna look horridable together ><;

Edit:


I'm not that happy with the Psychopath panel, but maybe some simple icons instead of text...

Edit: Incidentally, I just noticed there's plenty space now to show the entire font without scrollbars

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<GreyMaria> I walked around the Lake so many goddamn times that my sex drive was brutally murdered
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Posted by perfectacle

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can you open japanese rom?

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I think that was already asked. Answer was "no".

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Wife make lunch - Shampoo
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<GreyMaria> I walked around the Lake so many goddamn times that my sex drive was brutally murdered
Kawa rocks — byuu